“Is Daybreak a racing certainty or another seaside donkey?”

Raymond Snoddy on ‘Daybreak’: “If I had spent £10 million, covered Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley with bucket-loads of gold, and promoted the relaunch relentlessly, I would be disappointed”…

There is no more dangerous time in the life of a media property than The Relaunch.

The fact that one has been ordered in the first place means that there is a problem – declining viewers, readers, revenues – second place at best.

The central dilemma is universal – eternal.

Do you do it quietly, surreptitiously, gradually improving the beast without any risk of frightening the existing customers in the hope that things will improve over time?

Or do you go for broke, spend a lot of money to attract a larger, sometimes even a completely new audience?

Over the years the Daily Telegraph has been a model example of gradual transformation, with the introduction of rampant modern devices such as features. They knew their readers weren’t so keen on change and certainly wouldn’t care for a tabloid format.

Everyone thought Kelvin MacKenzie was not just brutal but mad when he turned Talk Radio into TalkSport, showing the door to most of his existing “old women” listeners, without knowing for sure he would attract a new gang. It worked.

With breakfast television you have to be doubly careful. You’ve got the underlying resistance to change. If anything, this is intensified by the vulnerable state of your audience at that time of day, the desire to cling to the familiar.

The Relaunch of Working Lunch at the BBC tipped the programme towards the departure lounge.

The history of breakfast television in the UK is not exactly encouraging.

As Sir Michael Parkinson, one of the Famous Five who launched TV-am, said of the experience: “We achieved the impossible and turned a racing certainty into a seaside donkey.”

Has ITV with Daybreak, the latest iteration of commercial breakfast television, produced a racing certainty or yet another seaside donkey?

They have certainly gone for the Big Bang and spent an estimated £10 million on expensive presenters, a plush state-of-the art studio, HD and primary colours.

None of that guarantees success, as Sky News found to its cost when all new fangled razzamatazz and investment simply cost them viewers.

In terms of ratings, all you can say is so far so good. The numbers aren’t too bad. Just over 1 million compared with around 660,000 for the sofa that was.

But the BBC, privately rather worried about what was about to hit them, can relax a bit. The initial storm has been weathered in the shape of a very decent 1.4 million audience for Breakfast.

If I had spent £10 million, covered Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley with bucket-loads of gold, and promoted the relaunch relentlessly with double page spreads in the nationals and vast posters, I would be disappointed.

The fuss should have attracted a larger sampling audience. The danger now is that we have already reached the summit and that at least some of that million will now drift off.

Then the challenge will become an even more difficult one – building a bigger audience, one by one, over time.

By Christmas we will have a better idea of whether they are going to make it or not or whether the words “seaside” and “donkey” will once more spring to mind.

Meanwhile, a few observations, which I hope will be helpful.

At the moment the programme seems far too besotted with its name. Daybreak.

They seem intent on behaving like Druids celebrating the fact that somehow the sun has managed to rise again this morning in Penzance, Newcastle and Glasgow. For God’s sake, we know the sun manages to rise most mornings unaided.

The open glass studio is designed to make the sun rising a central feature of the programme. It just about works for now but has anybody thought about what happens when autumn and then winter approaches?

It will look like a depressing night-time show, an impression underlined by this morning’s effort – having a Jamaican jazz band in for no apparent reason other than they were “cool”.

Perhaps in the winter they can import a Californian daybreak to cheer us all up.

The interview with Tony Blair on opening morning? The toughest question came from Ms Bleakley betraying her Ulster background: “Will you be able to have a drink with Gordon Brown anytime soon?”

There was a decent story this morning though – the ill- treatment of the Indian poor to make way for the Commonwealth Games.

As for the “chemistry” between the millionaire presenters; Bleakley smiles too much, and Chiles too little. They also feel the need to almost sit on top of each other despite the spacious studio. Why?

And as others have noted Chiles seems to squint at the autocue as if he was only introduced to the device very recently.

The programme should also be prosecuted for the £100,000 competition. It’s a lottery selling tickets at a minimum of £1.50 a pop – other networks may charge more – rather than a genuine quiz involving skill or brain traces.

Is a century 100 years, 50 or 25 years? Yeah. Right. As someone asked, is it a trick question? Is it a Pakistani cricket century where you have to take the no-balls into account?

Overall it looks as if they are trying too hard, and that there is far too much going on. It’s not the least bit relaxing – designed to ease you into the day.

And they haven’t found out how to end the programme yet. This morning everyone was milling around for two minutes as if they were already off air.

Best wishes to all though – but I’m off to rejoin the 8 million or so who tune into the Today programme every morning.